thegreenpages.ca

David Suzuki: The baffling response to Arctic climate change

2013-02-05T14:00:49Z

With Arctic ice melting, Australia on fire and increasing droughts, floods and extreme weather throughout the world, it’s past time to get serious about global warming. (Credit: Nick Russill via Flickr)

By David Suzuki

The Arctic may seem like a distant place, just as the most extreme consequences of our wasteful use of fossil fuels may appear to be in some distant future. Both are closer than most of us realize.

The Arctic is a focal point for some of the most profound impacts of climate change. One of the world’s top ice experts, Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, calls the situation a “global disaster”, suggesting ice is disappearing faster than predicted and could be gone within as few as four years.

“The main cause is simply global warming: as the climate has warmed there has been less ice growth during the winter and more ice melt during the summer,” he told the U.K.’s Guardian.

Over the past 30 years, permanent Arctic sea ice has shrunk to half its previous area and thickness. As it diminishes, global warming accelerates. This is due to a number of factors, including release of the potent greenhouse gas methane trapped under nearby permafrost, and because ice reflects the sun’s energy whereas oceans absorb it.

With all we know about climate change and what’s happening in the Arctic, you’d think our leaders would be marshalling resources to at least slow it down. Instead, industry and governments are eyeing new opportunities to mine Arctic fossil fuels. Factoring in threats to the numerous species of Arctic creatures — including fish, seabirds, marine mammals such as whales and seals, and polar bears — makes such an approach even more incomprehensible.

Royal Dutch Shell has been preparing to drill in the Arctic, spending $4.5 billion on operations and lease purchases. But its record shows how risky this is. First, a spill containment dome failed a routine safety test and was crushed by underwater pressure. More recently, a drilling rig, which was being towed to Seattle so Shell could avoid paying some Alaskan taxes, broke free during a storm and ran aground on an island in the Gulf of Alaska. The disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 showed how dangerous ocean drilling can be even in relatively calm waters and how bogus the claims of the industry are that it can contain or even clean up a spill.

Responding to climate change and vanishing Arctic ice by gearing up to drill for the stuff at the root of the problem is insane. Unfortunately, many fossil fuel companies and governments are engaged in a mad rush to get as much oil and gas out of the ground — no matter how difficult — while there’s still a market. The ever-increasing devastation of climate change means we will eventually have to leave much of it where it is — or at the very least, substantially slow the pace of extraction and use the resource more wisely — if we want to survive and be healthy as a species.

In Ecuador, knowing that exploiting the country’s massive oil reserves will fuel climate change and cause massive environmental destruction in one of the world’s most biologically diverse rainforests, leaders are taking a different approach. The government plans to leave oil fields in Yasuni National Park untouched if other countries help compensate for some of the lost revenue. So far only about $300 million has been raised toward the $3.6 billion over 13 years that the government believes would make up for half the oil’s value, but the idea is gaining momentum.

The Guardian notes the money won’t go to government but will be “held in trust funds and administered by the UN Development Programme working with a board made up of indigenous peoples, local communities, academics and others.”

Ivonne Baki, head of the negotiating committee of the Yasuní-Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini, told the Guardian Ecuador does not want to become overly dependent on oil. “Oil countries are cursed,” she said. “Developing countries depend on it so much that they do not develop anything else. It breeds corruption and the poor pay the price.”

With Arctic ice melting, Australia on fire and increasing droughts, floods and extreme weather throughout the world, it’s past time to get serious about global warming. It remains to be seen if a plan like Ecuador’s will work, but surely a developed country like Canada can at least learn that wastefully exploiting precious resources as quickly as possible isn’t the only option.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Communications Manager Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Corporate Knights announces “Global 100″ top sustainable corporations in the world

2013-01-26T16:58:14Z

Davos, Switzerland – Recently recognized as the world’s most credible corporate sustainability ranking, the Global 100 consists of the 100 top-performing stocks worldwide on a range of sector-specific “sustainability” metrics.

“The Global 100 are leading a resource productivity revolution, transforming waste into treasure and doing more with less,” said Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps. “They are steering our civilization away from ecological overshoot and back to a place of balance with our planet.”

Canada and the United States led the way in country representation, each with 10 constituents, followed by Australia, Britain and France, each with 9 constituents. Overall, the Global 100 drew companies from 22 countries on six continents.

Corporate Knights uses its flagship Global 100 ranking and the underlying research methodology to explore sustainable investment strategies with investors.

Data for the project was primarily collected from Bloomberg and through direct engagement with the 350 companies that made the project’s shortlist, selected from the project’s starting universe of all global mid and large cap stocks (numbering approximately 4,000).

The Global 100 uses a two-step methodology: First, companies from the starting universe are screened according to their sustainability disclosure practices, financial health, product types and recent legal payouts. Those companies that remain are then scored, relative to their same-sector peers, on a set of key performance indicators (KPIs). A different suite of KPIs is used for companies in each industry, depending on recent reporting trends in each industry group.

“We feel that the sustainability data that flows into our Global 100 research model, once properly cleansed, can contain hidden and statistically robust signals about companies’ future financial performance,” said Doug Morrow, VP Research at Corporate Knights. ”It is a vastly underutilized source of competitive information on Wall Street and in the asset management community worldwide.”

Celebrating youth environmental action

2013-01-26T16:18:59Z

Toronto – From starting school recycling programs to engaging in groundbreaking scientific research, high school students across Canada are responding to environmental issues at local, national and global levels and demonstrating their leadership in the process.

Through the Toyota Earth Day Scholarship Program, Toyota Canada Foundation and Earth Day Canada are acknowledging the valuable work of these students and are rewarding their efforts as they enter post-secondary studies.

The scholarship program rewards 20 graduating high school and Cégep students entering their first year of post-secondary education with $5,000 scholarships for their environmental community service, extracurricular and volunteer activities and academic excellence.

The deadline to apply is February 15, 2013.

For more information, please visit earthday.ca/scholarship.

David Suzuki: Could hockey become an endangered sport?

2013-01-25T16:57:40Z

Unless we rein in greenhouse gas emissions, outdoor skating in parts of Canada could be history within the next 50 to 100 years. (Credit: kris krüg via Flickr)

By David Suzuki

One benefit of the National Hockey League strike: it gave people time to play outside on real ice! But outdoor skating could face the same difficulties as the NHL - a drastically shorter season or outright cancellation. Research from Montreal’s McGill and Concordia universities shows global warming is already having an effect on outdoor rinks in Canada.

“Many locations across the country have seen significant decreases in the length of the OSS [outdoor skating season], as measured by the number of cold winter days conducive to the creation of rink ice,” their study states. “This is particularly true across the Prairies, and in Southwest Canada, which showed the largest (and most statistically significant) decreases in the calculated OSS length between 1951 and 2005.”

This echoes a 2009 David Suzuki Foundation report, On Thin Ice: Winter Sports and Climate Change. The McGill investigation looks at constructed outdoor rinks while DSF’s focuses on frozen rivers, canals and lakes, but the conclusions are similar. Both predict that, unless we rein in greenhouse gas emissions, outdoor skating in parts of Canada could be history within the next 50 to 100 years (the McGill study’s authors now say it could happen within 20 to 30 years), and the length of the outdoor skating season will continue to decline across the country.

Meanwhile, at Ontario’s Wilfrid Laurier University, geographers have launched www.RinkWatch.org, a website where people can record information about backyard or neighbourhood rink conditions over the winter.

“Our hope is that Canadians from coast to coast will help us track changes in skating conditions, not just this year, but for many years to come,” associate professor Robert McLeman said in a release. “This data will help us determine the impact of climate change on winter in terms of length of season and average temperatures.”

According to the DSF report, one of Canada’s best-loved outdoor skating venues, Ottawa’s Rideau Canal, provides an example of what to expect. It concludes that, with current emissions trends, the canal’s skating season could shrink from the previous average of nine weeks to 6.5 weeks by 2020, less than six weeks by 2050 and just one week by the end of the century. In fact, two winters ago, the season lasted 7.5 weeks, and last year it was down to four. The canal had yet to fully open for skating when this column was written.

“On Thin Ice” notes that many of Canada’s hockey heroes got their start on outdoor rinks. “Without pond hockey, we probably wouldn’t have what has become the modern game of hockey,” the authors state. The DSF study says climate change could have a profound effect on many other winter sports, from skiing and snowboarding to winter mountaineering.

With food and water problems caused by more frequent droughts and floods, property losses and high infrastructure costs from rising sea levels, and increasing illness and death from extreme weather and pollution, hockey may be the least of our worries. But losing winter recreation opportunities, let alone our ability to produce food and keep our homes warm and people healthy, needn’t happen. Solutions to our human-created problems exist. We just need our leaders to start taking this and other environmental issues seriously.

That’s not likely as long as we keep electing people who show more concern for the future of the fossil fuel industry than the citizens they are supposed to represent. Politicians who only look ahead three or four years — until the next election — aren’t seeing the big picture.

We need to consider every solution possible, now — from putting a price on emissions through carbon taxes and/or cap-and-trade to stopping the rapid exploitation of fossil fuels and switching to cleaner energy sources.

A skate or hockey game outside is a good place to start!

If you’re in Quebec City for Carnaval, January 31 to February 3, join the David Suzuki Foundation for Sommet de l’hiver — four days of sports, culture and science, presented with Desjardins, to raise awareness about climate change and its effects on winter. When former hockey stars team up for an outdoor game against artists to help save winter sports, you may even see some NHL heroes.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Communications Manager Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Point of No Return: Greenpeace releases report critical of Canada’s tar sands

2013-01-22T14:50:16Z

A look at a tar sands mine from space (Image via Wikipedia.)

Toronto – Canada’s tar sands ranked fifth of the 14 largest carbon intensive projects in the world, according to a new report from Greenpeace International.

The report, called Point of No Return, notes major energy projects (such as the tar sands in Canada) that increase climate change and place populations at risk. The report also cites the proposed massive coal expansion in Australia, China, the US and Indonesia, oil expansion in the Arctic and Brazil, and new gas production in the Caspian Sea and the US.

“No government can approve mega projects like Shell’s proposed new tar sands mines and claim they want to prevent climate chaos and devastation,” said Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Canada.

Stewart presented the early results from the Canadian component of the report in November 2012 to the Joint Review Panel assessing Shell’s proposed expansion of the Jackpine tar sands mine.

The new report includes ground-breaking analysis by the consultancy Ecofys, which shows that by 2020 these 14 projects will increase CO2 emissions by six gigatonnes a year. The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that despite years of government promises to reduce emissions, CO2 emissions are already at a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes.

The Ecofys modeling found that the yearly CO2 emissions from these projects will be higher than total US emissions and will result in catastrophic global warming.

As key business and government leaders gather in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum (WEF), they will find WEF’s Global Risks 2013 report, which warns that we are on course for the global temperature to increase of 3.6 to 4 degrees Celsius and possibly by as much as 6 degrees. These increases are well above the promise of governments to keep global warming to below a 2-degree increase.

“Given the human suffering, destruction and economic turmoil of recent extreme weather events, a world with runaway climate change is a frightening prospect. We cannot let that be our legacy,” said Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International, who is attending the WEF.

The report identifies policy measures that could use renewable energy and energy efficiency to more than replace the energy from these 14 mega projects.

“We have the renewable energy solutions we need to avoid devastating climate change,” said Stewart “but when companies like Shell are promoting, and the Harper government is allowing, these massive climate threats stand in the way.”

NFB webdoc BEAR 71 named 2012 FWA Site of the Year

2013-01-20T15:13:58Z

Montreal – The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) interactive documentary Bear 71 (nfb.ca/bear71) has received one of the Web’s highest honours: the Favourite Website Awards (FWA) Site of the Year.

Announced on January 15, FWA Site of the Year for 2012 was selected by a panel of international judges. The U.K.-based FWA was established in 2000 to recognize the latest and best cutting-edge creativity online.

It’s the most recent new-media honour for Canada’s trailblazing public producer, a six-time Webby Award winner and global leader in the emerging field of interactive documentaries.

“In a year when we have seen so much experimental work, so many agencies and clients focused on just trying to be cool with mobile, I was delighted to see a real idea and a powerful story win this year’s Site of the Year. Without a doubt, Bear 71 was the most captivating and thought-provoking experience of 2012, executed with perfection for our digital consumption, and a very worthy winner of our ultimate yearly title,” said Rob Ford, FWA founder.

More praise for Bear 71 from FWA judges is available online.

Bear 71 was created by Jeremy Mendes, Leanne Allison and the NFB’s Loc Dao, who is executive producer and chief technologist for the NFB’s English-language Digital Studio, based in Vancouver. Bear 71 was written by J.B. MacKinnon and voiced by Mia Kirshner. Aubyn Freybe-Smith designed the site and Jam3 (Pablo Vio, Creative Director) did the interactive design and programming. Bear 71 was produced by Loc Dao, Edmonton-based NFB producer Bonnie Thompson and Dana Dansereau. The project was executive produced by Dao, Rob McLaughlin and David Christensen.

The FWA Site of the Year award is the second international accolade for Bear 71, which won the NFB its first-ever Gold Cyber Lion Award at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June 2012.

The NFB’s Digital Studio creates pioneering, world-renowned interactive works from its English-language unit based in Vancouver and French-language unit in Montreal.

NFB’s Bear 71 named website of the year

Solar Co-op, Green Investor, Love Your Lake – GCNews #803

2013-01-17T04:52:29Z

803: 14 January 2013 – Published by Green Communities Canada.

SOLAR CO-OP. Windfall Centre manages York Solar Co-operative’s project development that offers York Region residents an opportunity to invest (Solar Bonds for $1000 each) in local community-owned rooftop solar energy projects. In order to apply for Feed-in-Tariff contracts, the Co-op needs 50 York Region homeowners to sign up for membership. Any landowner in York Region can become a member. Memberships are free until 18 January 2013.

YEAR IN REVEIW. Équiterre’s senior spokespersons, Sidney Ribaux, Isabelle St-Germain and Steven Guilbeault, take a look back at the highlights of 2012 and share some of the top issues on the radar for the coming year (video, in English) … See Équiterre`s environmental policy review of 2012, “Overall, in 2012, several environmental issues evolved favourably in Quebec while Ottawa amputated Canadian environmental laws and continued to lag behind almost every other industrial nation internationally.“

PROMOTIONAL STRETCH. Facebook pages of Canada Walks and WALK Friendly Ontario are featuring websites and webpages that encourage walking and walk friendly communities this week. Please help by posting links to great examples in your province.

GREEN IN 2013. Green Action Centre’s Communications manager Josh Brandon joined Breakfast Television Winnipeg to talk about a few easy ways to go green. 2 January.

GREEN INVESTOR. It’s time to think about RRSP contributions: Green Calgary presents Socially Responsible Investing: Investments that make a Difference workshop. 16 January.

DEMO HOUSE FUNDING. EcoSuperior received $93,600 from Ontario Trillium Foundation over one year to start developing a resource centre (Net Zero House) that will showcase environmentally-conscious design for green living in Thunder Bay and present eco-friendly products and practices in use for home and office settings.

LOVE YOUR LAKE. GreenUP received $147,900 from Ontario Trillium Foundation over two years to hire staff and provide program support to deliver Love Your Lake program, which will increase knowledge and opportunities regarding lake stewardship in the Kawartha-Haliburton region.

MARCH BREAK CAMP. See Environment Network Exploration Greens’ March Break Day Camp for 6-10 year olds: discover how animals find food, water and shelter in snow, participate in unique winter-focused games.11-15 March, $175 for the week.

GREEN PLAN. Green Action Centre has submitted an 83 page report with recommendations to Manitoba’s TomorrowNow Green Plan.

SHARE ELECTRIC. WWF-Canada and AutoShare make driving an electric vehicle easy : under the Green Traveller Program, you can register at AutoShare for only $29 (regularly $129) and use an EV for free until 30 January.

ONE HUNDRED SPONSORS. Green Calgary welcomes three new Corporate Members, for a total of 100 sponsors: Portionality, a Calgary-based corporate event catering company that focuses exclusively on providing healthy, fresh, whole foods made from scratch; Rocky Mountain Soap Company makes 100% natural bath & body products in Canmore; Suddwick Homes, a custom home builder and renovator based in NW Calgary.

CLIMATE ADVOCATE. New US Secretary of State, John Kerry, is among the most fierce advocates for climate action in the Senate, reports Mother Jones. “He’s been a champion of international climate action since 1992.”

CREATIVE CITIES. In this video, Gord Hume (Cultural Planning for Creative Communities) talks about the changing demographic trends facing local governments, why creative city concepts are an important economic development tool, and why municipalities must be moving now to change their processes and planning to create the kinds of communities that will attract the ‘CRINK economy’ (CReative, INnovative, Knowledge-based).

DISASTER CYCLING. Following Superstorm Sandy the number of bike riders on the East River bridges rose more than 130%. While non-bikers experienced double or triple their pre-Sandy commute time depending on where they lived, walkers and bikers added only nine minutes to their commute time on average.

WAKAWAKA. WakaWaka Compact Solar Power Station & Light provides safe solar lights to Haitians still living in shelters; it can also charge phones and tablets. Funds are raised through a crowdfunding campaign.

SEX-CHANGE BURGERS. A team of US scientists looked at fish populations in Indiana streams downstream from confined-animal feedlot operations: in CAFO-tainted water, 60% of minnows turned out male. In non-contaminated water, male ratio was 48%. The CAFO-exposed water also showed lower species biodiversity, and the fish in them had reduced fertlity.

JOBS. Peterborough GreenUP has two positions, Executive Director, due 28 January and Heritage Tree Book Writer/ Editor. Peterborough, due 9 January … reThink Green (Sudbury) has two positions, Consultant, due 8 February, and Event/Fundraising Specialist/Earth Day Festival. no due date … Greening Nipissing, Fundraising Intern Position. North Bay, due 11 January … Ontario Clean Water Agency, Energy Efficiency Manager. Toronto, due 22 January … Town of East Gwillimbury, Environmental Compliance Technologist/Water/Wastewate. Due 18 January … City of Toronto, Director Environment And Energy. Due 31 January … Sustain Ontario, has two positions: Acting Director, due 16 January, and Children and Youth Food Network Coordinator, due 10 January … Table Community Food Centre, Garden Program Coordinator. Perth, due 23 January … Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust, Fundraising and Communications Manager. King City, due 1 February … Evergreen Brick Works, Project CoordinatoR. Toronto, no due date.

Managing waste at Whole Foods

2013-01-14T04:24:45Z

BC’s Upper Lillooet Hydro Project given “conditional” approval

2013-01-15T16:50:24Z

Image from the Wilderness Committee.

Vancouver – Despite wide-ranging opposition from local residents and environmental groups, the BC Environmental Assessment Office has announced its “conditional” approval of the Upper Lillooet Hydro Project.

The 121-megawatt independent power project (IPP) consists of three run-of-river hydro facilities located on the Upper Lillooet River, North Creek and Boulder Creek, which include key fish habitat including coho salmon and trout habitat. The project would dramatically reduce the flow of iconic Keyhole Falls.

The conditional Environmental Assessment Certificate, granted on January 10, includes 37 conditions to be monitored by the owners, Ledcor and Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. Environmental groups, however, suggest that the majority of these conditions are weak and unlikely to result in meaningful mitigation of environmental impacts.

A statement from the Environmental Assessment Office said that “the project is not expected to result in any significant adverse effects, based on the mitigation measures and conditions of the Environmental Assessment Certificate.”

“To say that this project will not have ‘significant adverse effects’ disregards a mountain of evidence that has emerged about the environmental impacts of private run-of-river projects,” said Gwen Barlee, Policy Director with the Wilderness Committee.

The approval of this project also draws attention to the completely inadequate oversight on IPPs by both federal and provincial bodies, particularly considering recent budget cuts and changes to the Fisheries Act.

David Suzuki: Rainforest defender Rebecca Tarbotton leaves inspiring legacy

2013-01-12T18:07:23Z

If there's one thing we can learn from Rebecca Tarbotton and the many other dedicated people in the world, it's that we can change the world if we care, think and act.

Last year ended on a sad note, with the accidental drowning death of Rebecca Tarbotton in Mexico, at 39 years of age. Becky was the inspirational executive director of San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network, but her roots were in British Columbia.

In an October speech, she eloquently recalled her early days in the environmental movement, including an internship at the David Suzuki Foundation, and explained how a few people with purpose, committed to a goal, can accomplish a lot. The speech can be viewed on the Rainforest Action Network website at ran.org.

Becky believed strongly in social justice and environmental protection. For her organization's campaign to save rainforests from the devastation of clear-cut logging, she and her colleagues met with book publishers to convince them to stop using paper from threatened areas.

Eight agreed, but the biggest victory came after much hard work and imaginative campaigning, when Rainforest convinced Disney to adopt a policy for all its operations, "eliminating paper connected to the destruction of endangered forests and animals." Disney is the world's largest publisher of children's books and magazines, but the policy extends beyond that business to cover paper for all of its interests and supply chains everywhere in the world, including theme parks and cruise ships.

Becky also referred to a seemingly gloomy conversation she once had with me about the failure of environmentalism. She got the point I was trying to make. In her speech, she said, "We need to remember that the work of our time is bigger than climate change. We need to be setting our sights higher and deeper. What we're really talking about, if we're honest with ourselves, is transforming everything about the way we live on this planet.... We don't always know exactly what it is that creates social change. It takes everything from science all the way to faith, and it's that fertile place right in the middle where really exceptional campaigning happens -- and that is where I strive to be."

After a year when, as U.K. writer George Monbiot says, "governments turned their backs on the living planet, demonstrating that no chronic problem, however grave, will take priority over an immediate concern, however trivial," we need to look to the example of brave and inspiring people like Becky Tarbotton. If our leaders are not willing to lead, it's up to the rest of us.

We've seen what kind of "leadership" to expect from our elected representatives. In Canada, our government is gutting environmental protections and regulations in the name of speeding up fossil fuel exploitation, no matter how much this contributes to climate change. As Arctic sea ice melts to levels that experts have referred to as a "global disaster", possibly disappearing within four to 10 years, industry and governments salivate at the prospect of having more open areas for oil and gas drilling, despite their being in sensitive ecosystems with extremely risky conditions.

Unfortunately, too many politicians focus more on the fossil fuel industry than the citizens they are elected to represent. As writer Rebecca Solnit recently posted for a year-end essay on TomDispatch.com, "For millions of years, this world has been a great gift to nearly everything living on it, a planet whose atmosphere, temperature, air, water, seasons, and weather were precisely calibrated to allow us -- the big us, including forests and oceans, species large and small -- to flourish. (Or rather, it was we who were calibrated to its generous, even bounteous, terms.) And that gift is now being destroyed for the benefit of a few members of a single species."

It's not that people support what's happening. A recent Environics poll showed most Canadians believe our governments should do far more to combat climate change. Polls indicate similar trends in the U.S. and U.K.

Sometimes the odds seem so overwhelming that it's tempting to run and hide, to give up. Sometimes the gains seem so small and the setbacks so great that we can't think of much to do beyond looking at our kids and saying, "Sorry."

But if there's one thing we can learn from Rebecca Tarbotton and the many other dedicated people in the world, it's that we can change the world if we care, think and act.

thegreenpages.ca

David Suzuki: The baffling response to Arctic climate change

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